Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

frantically

replicable?

competencies

Hiring

Be the one of what they are looking for diliver comitte

Once you assess someone thoroughly, check references, and decide to hire them—you also have to decide to trust them.

inoculation,

And that’s when they’ll leave, usually of their own accord.

amicably

take the reins—don’t

jack-of-all-trades.

status quo,

most importantly, product managers are the voice of the customer. They keep every team in check to make sure they don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal—happy, satisfied customers.

Product management is on that path now. But unfortunately we’re not there yet.

A good product manager will do a little of everything and a great deal of all this:

And that’s why product management has to own the messaging. The spec shows the features, the details of how a product will work, but the messaging predicts people’s concerns and finds ways to mitigate them.

They help everyone understand the context of what the customer needs, then work together to make the right choices. If a product manager is making all the decisions, then they are not a good product manager.

make their money, then jump ship to the next hot company, leaving a trail of problems behind them.

Many salespeople won’t give two shits about your mission. They’ll be focused on how much they’re making month to month. They’ll want to close deals and get paid. It won’t matter what they’re selling as long as it sells.

your sales team will abandon you. They’ll go wherever the sales are hot. Why should they stick with you if they can’t make money right now? Or you might find out that those great numbers they’ve been putting up aren’t so great after all. Maybe they’ve been telling little white lies about your team’s capacity or your product’s ability to meet customers’ needs. Maybe all those customers flowing into your business have been sold something you can’t actually give them. And now they’re pissed.

You don’t have a relationship with an ATM machine—you just walk up to it and take your money. And once a customer feels like an ATM, clawing them back is almost impossible.

This customer would be frustrated, irritated, right on the brink of anger. But a spectacular experience with support could instantly turn that frustration into a moment of delight—into a customer who would be with us forever.

It turns you into a babysitter. And kids may like the babysitter at first—it’s nice to go to the local park, to watch movies and eat pizza. It’s fun for a while. But eventually kids want to go further, do more. They want to go skateboarding. They want to explore. So they might start testing their boundaries to see what they can get away with. They might roll their eyes when the babysitter tells them what to do. Because a babysitter is not a parent. All kids need someone they respect who truly knows them. Who gives them a push at the right time, who helps them grow. And they need someone they can project their hopes and aspirations onto.

When you explain why you’re doing something, it should be all about the customers, not about you.

A board’s primary responsibility is to hire and fire the CEO. That is the main way they can protect the company and the one and only job they have that really counts. Everything else comes down to giving good advice and respectful, no-bullshit feedback that hopefully steers the CEO in the right direction.

Bad CEOs come to board meetings and expect the board to help them make decisions. Good CEOs walk in with a presentation of where the company was, where it is now, and where it’s headed this quarter and in the years to come.

clamoring

infinitum.

He believed if they are worthwhile and important, then you should treat them as such.

we needed it to help people have the life they wanted outside work. Instead of making the office so luxe that employees would never leave, we spent our money on meaningful benefits for them and their families—better health care, IVF, the stuff that really changes people’s lives.

Just as dessert shouldn’t come before dinner, perks shouldn’t come before the mission you’re there to achieve. The mission should fill and fuel your company. The perks should be a sprinkle of sugar on top.

Not every founder is cut out to be a CEO at every stage of a company. Sometimes they don’t know how a medium-sized company works, let alone a big one.

Sometimes the entire market changes; sometimes the priorities of the planet evolve. These are the moments when the company a CEO was running before doesn’t make sense in the world anymore. Oil and gas CEOs are looking down the barrel of this moment right now. So are automakers. It’s time for a new model.

In the end, there are two things that matter: products and people. What you build and who you build it with.

So you push. As a leader, a CEO, a mentor—you push even when people resent you for it. Even when you worry that maybe you’ve pushed too far . . . But

The Hard Thing About Hard Things:

The Monk and the Riddle

Tim Ferriss Show podcast.

conversation with Peter Flint on his NFX podcast.

Evolving for the Next Billion podcast.

I did a whole TED talk about habituation, if you’re interested in digging in further. You

Take a look at www.gapminder.org/dollar-street to see how much people around the world make in a month and what their lives look like. It’s an incredible resource to learn how different or similar we all can be.